Neill Blomkamp’s Blockchain Gaming Studio Hasn’t Paid Staff for Months , The Web3 Dream Is Crumbling

The Gunzilla Games tale, which first surfaced on LinkedIn in early April 2026, developed as similar stories usually do. A former worker made a post. Then one more. Then a few more. By the time it reached the gaming press, the cumulative effect was the kind of public disclosure that businesses often work very hard to avoid. Paul Creamer, a VFX, cinematic, and gameplay animator at Gunzilla from March 2025 to March 2026, claimed on social media that he had not received payment since October 2025.

With promises that the delays were only temporary, he had carried on working through October, November, and December. Vlad Korolev, the CEO, allegedly told his department over the phone in December that the business was successful and that it was best to remain silent. By Creamer’s account, the invoices never showed up.

The story is more difficult to resolve than the typical game-development compensation disagreement because of the studio’s unique status. Due in major part to Neill Blomkamp, the Oscar-nominated director of District 9, Chappie, and Gran Turismo and the studio’s chief creative officer, Gunzilla Games was co-founded with considerable industry attention. Gunzilla gained a degree of credibility from the Hollywood affiliation that pure-Web3 gaming firms typically find difficult to obtain. about the course of six investment rounds, the studio raised about $101 million.

Off the Grid, the game it developed under Blomkamp’s artistic guidance, made one of the loudest entrances in Web3 gaming history when it entered early access in October 2024. Twelve million people signed up. At launch, there were 120,000 concurrent Twitch watchers. In the first month, there were over 500,000 active users every day. It received a decent reception from the gaming press, including publications that are often dubious about blockchain integration.

Beneath the launch numbers, the financial picture presents a different image. On March 31, 2025, Gunzilla used Binance Launchpool to launch the $GUN token, which peaked at about $0.115 on launch day. GUN had fallen by around 89% from its peak by early 2026, settling into a range of $0.02 to $0.03. The token’s demise and the wider decline in funding for cryptocurrency gaming, which Gunzilla’s own Director of Web3,

Theodore Agranat, confirmed in a December 2025 interview as having “dried up,” lie beneath the April wage-payment issues. The question is whether the wage issues were brought on by the funding crisis or if they were previously there and the crisis only brought them to light. The evidence that is accessible to the public does not completely establish which is true.

After Creamer’s piece, a chorus of former workers surfaced, adding nuance that single-source accusations typically lack. Dozens of people had unpaid salary, according to UI programmer Riccardo Galdieri, who eventually received payment after hiring legal counsel. Rayan Tiraghan, an animator, said the firm owed him money as well. Despite not receiving payment for August and September of 2025, concept artist Sergei Kochurkin claimed that his character designs were nonetheless included in the game.

Even if the studio’s official messages have been less generous, Alex Jay Brady pointed out that Neill Blomkamp had personally paid him out of pocket after going public. This fact implies Blomkamp himself has been treating the matter as one he’s trying to fix informally. It’s difficult to see past the discrepancy between Blomkamp’s personal behavior and the studio’s institutional reaction.

On April 9, 2026, Korolev responded publicly on X, characterizing the criticism as “haters” spreading “FUD” (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) against “the biggest web3 game ever created.” Although he acknowledged that “some payments may be scheduled in a way that works for the company’s cash flow — not always for everyone individually,” he stated that full-time official employees were paid on time. In its meticulous formulation, the denial didn’t really refute the majority of the accusations.

Rather losing full-time employees, the majority of those impacted were contractors and independent contractors. Korolev’s portrayal of payment timing as a typical cash-flow management technique, as opposed to a failure to pay agreed-upon salaries, clashes with the months-long delays that specific individuals have made public.

Observing how this has developed over the last four weeks gives me the impression that Gunzilla’s predicament perfectly depicts the state of Web3 gaming by the middle of 2026. Through blockchain integration, the category was meant to change ownership, economics, and player interaction. In Gunzilla’s instance, the real result has been a token fall, a decline in player retention, wage problems for contractors, and a CEO publicly criticizing those who have valid concerns about their compensation.

A firm with cultural aspirations beyond the short-term financial gains was implied by the Game Informer rebirth earlier this year, which brought back the venerable gaming magazine that GameStop had shut down in August 2024. The main unsettling aspect of the tale is the difference between that public narrative and the reality the Gunzilla contractors have been portraying in their LinkedIn posts.

The studio’s ability to rebuild its credibility with the larger gaming and Web3 businesses and pay the developers of the game will determine whether it survives the next few quarters in any recognizable form. As of late April 2026, the early signs do not indicate that either conclusion is nearly certain.